


Dark Night of the Soul

by CelesteAntola



Category: Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV), Iron Fist (TV), Jessica Jones (TV), Luke Cage (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Angst, Drinking to Cope, F/F, F/M, Hurt Matt, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Inaccuracies, Medical Trauma, Mental Anguish, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Religious Conflict, Will add more tags as we go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-06-28 12:53:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15707613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CelesteAntola/pseuds/CelesteAntola
Summary: Post-Defenders AU. Matt is critically wounded after the events at Midland Circle. As he convalesces, a new threat appears in New York City that forces him to face his demons...





	1. Chapter 1

She groans, her eyes fluttering open.

Where-?

_Matthew._

His name snaps her mind into focus, clearing the haze of what is most likely a concussion.

No matter. She’ll heal from that in a moment.

It is dark all around her, the air hot and close.

That's right. The building- Midland Circle- it collapsed down around them.

She takes stock of her body, feeling no broken bones, despite a heavy weight on her legs, pinning her face down to the ground. She wiggles her fingers carefully, then flexes her wrists and elbows. All good there.

She coughs from the dust hanging thick in the air. “Matthew!” she calls out, hoping that he fared as well as she. Though she is the Black Sky and he is only human, vulnerable and breakable.

She can hear the creaks and groans of settling steel and concrete, but nothing more. She wonders briefly how it is that she’s not completely buried, reaching out and feeling several large objects in the space around her.

Matthew can’t be far. He was in her arms as the building came down around them.

She calls out again. No response.

A prickle of a feeling- something she once might have described as worry- clutches at her heart.

She huffs in frustration and then remembers the mobile phone she’d tucked into the pocket at her hip. Blindly, she digs for it, pulling it out from beneath herself.

She thumbs the home button, blinking rapidly against the bright glare of the screen as it lights up. She quickly finds the button for the on-board flashlight and holds the phone up to illuminate the area around her.

Chunks of stone and concrete have fallen around her and her light reflects dimly off of murky black pools of water. She pushes up onto one arm and trains the beam upward, discovering that it is the massive skeletal remains of the beast that are affording her some amount of safety. In the gloom, she can see that its ribs have caved in some places, but the giant spine of the creature is holding strong… for now.

Grunting with effort, she pushes up onto her knees, lifting the block of stone enough to slip out from beneath it. It lands heavily on the ground beside her, kicking up enough dust and debris to set her coughing again.

Freed from the stone, she shakes feeling back into her legs and starts to slowly sweep the narrow beam of the phone flashlight around her. “Matthew!” she calls again, listening for a reply and crawling forward carefully when she receives none.

Directly ahead is the obsidian glimmer of a pool of water and it is there that she catches a glimpse of red peeking out from beneath a fallen slab of concrete.

She pushes herself to her feet and scrambles over to it, closer proximity revealing it to be a gloved hand.

“Oh, Matthew,” she breathes, falling back to her knees amid the pool of water, not caring about the dampness soaking through her body armor. She touches his hand, hopeful for a response, a twitch, anything… but it is so very still…

She growls in frustration, unwilling to lose him now, not after everything…

She’s back on her feet in an instant, shining the dimming light of the phone around, quickly assessing the piece of rubble trapping him.

She clenches the phone clumsily between her teeth and brings all her supernatural strength to bear as she grasps the slab and pushes it up and away from Matthew’s prone body.

A scream rips through the air as she does so, curdling even her undead blood.

She drops down beside him, unable to stop herself from saying his name over and over, as she takes in piece by piece of his broken body by way of the failing phone flashlight.

His suit is in tatters, his helmet cracked clear across the middle. Dark rivulets of blood forge grotesque streams across his pale skin. His breathing is shallow and uneven, each movement of his chest pulling at a serious wound in his side.

As carefully as she can, she lifts his limp body into her arms, flinching when he cries out again with the movement.

Once again, time is her enemy… She will find a way out.

—

They emerge from the sewers what feels like an eternity later. He is heavy and worryingly quiet in her arms now, though the wound in his side has ceased to bleed, which she’s willing to take as a good sign.

Dawn is starting to creep over the city, though it does nothing to warm the chill of the winter morning. She needs to get him to warmth and safety quickly.

She moved swiftly beneath the city, once they had found their way up into the sewer system from the underground rivers, her body tireless and strong even now as she hastens through back alleys, trying to avoid notice.

She knows just where it is best to leave Matthew.

Her obsession to understand all she could about what made the man tick had left her with some interesting discoveries. Discoveries that she was certain Matthew himself was completely, non-ironically, in the dark about…

Slipping into the convent was easy by way of a loosely secured gate that led into an open courtyard. Potted shrubs loomed darkly in the early morning gloom, the squat shapes of benches huddled alongside them.

The sound of a bell ringing from inside the convent startles her, and she hurries close to one of the bushes, trying to obscure themselves in its shadow. Warily she observes the windows of the convent that face into the courtyard. Dim lights flicker on in a few of them and sudden understanding calms her anxiety.

The bell was the convent’s wake-up call, and soon it would toll again to call the sisters to morning prayer. That would be the perfect time to sneak Matthew into the infirmary.

Taking advantage of the break this affords her, she carefully lowers his limp body to the ground, propping his back against the ceramic planter affording them cover. His head lolls limply forward and she crouches beside him, gently tilting his head back to keep his airways clear.

Something stirs in the pit of her stomach at the sight of him so fragile and vulnerable… so broken.

She isn’t sure she would describe it as _love_ as much as lust, a feral hunger that is far more destructive than it is nurturing, her basest self relishing Matthew’s pain and utter helplessness…

She always was attracted to the contradiction of strength and weakness that defined him, she remembers. It is truly a work of irony that the very abilities that make him fearless and capable are also the same things that make him soft and assailable… and desirable.

‘Weakness’ is what Stick would have called it, what he _did_ call it before she had silenced his nagging voice forever.

She felt no remorse for having done that. He was a bitter old man who had not only outlived his usefulness, but who had become her enemy.

Even he was weak, when it came to her. She knew the fondness Stick once had for her, and for Matthew, too, but he never expected the weapon he trained to become quite so ruthless…

The clang of the bell echoes through the courtyard once more, calling the convent’s inhabitants to their morning prayer. Just a few minutes more and she can get Matthew somewhere safe.

Sentimentality was never her forte, but she can’t help the pang of sadness she feels knowing that the safest place for him is as far away from her as possible.

She grits her teeth against the wave of emotion, beating it into submission by focusing solely on hoisting Matthew back up into her arms. His body is heavy against hers, his breath coming in shallow gasps against her shoulder, the dark gleam of blood more evident in the grey morning light.

She moves as lightly as she can across the courtyard, sticking close to the sides, so as not to be as obvious to anyone who might happen to look out into the space. As she suspected, the set of double doors leading into the convent are unlocked, the sisters falsely trusting in the security of their back gate.

The hallway is dark and deserted. She can hear the murmur of the voices of the women at prayer off to her right, so the obvious choice is to move in the opposite direction. At this point she’ll take a library or a waiting room sofa… the longer she’s here the more dangerous-

She stops in front of another set of double doors, their frosted glass panels labeled in hand-painted letters: _Infirmary._

She listens briefly and then slowly pushes through the doors when she hears no sounds from within.

Beds line the open room she finds herself in, almost all of them empty except for one, which held the form of a sleeping patient rolled over onto their side. She could hear them snoring lightly, reassuring her that she wouldn’t be detected just yet.

Quickly, she moves to the bed closest to her left and carefully lays Matthew down onto the mattress. He moans quietly as his body is shifted and she freezes, her eyes locked on the sleeping patient watching for any sign of awareness.

A long, tense moment passes before she releases the breath she’d been holding, confident that the room’s other occupant was still asleep, and she attends to Matthew again.

He is still unconscious, his bloodied mouth slack and his limbs heavy and unwieldy as she adjusts them into what she hopes will be a comfortable position. Gingerly, she pulls his grimy, cracked helmet away from his head, wanting to see his face just one more time…

His skin is shockingly pale in contrast to the deep crimson of the gaping wound on his forehead and dark purple bruises that are already beginning to mottle his stubbled jawline.

Her breath catches in her throat at the realization that this man- this _mortal_ man- is lying broken and bloodied because of- no, _for_ her. He willingly chose death, thinking that it was better to die trying to save her, than it was to live without her.

A bitter laugh crosses her lips. It is cruel irony that _she,_ instead, is the savior, and that in order to ensure his life she must leave him and never return.

“Fate can be cruel, Matthew” she murmurs, her fingertips ghosting over his lips, trying not to think of the kisses that will never be.

If she has a weakness, she knows it is him, knows that it is his softness and compassion that both disarms and intrigues her…

She laughs again, now at herself, for indulging such maudlin, melancholy thoughts.

He will live and he will learn to live without her. Co-dependent was never truly the type she wanted to indulge anyway.

She steps away from the bed, gazing cooly down at his motionless form.

They were never meant to be, regardless of Matthew’s “blind” idealism. Never would they have been able to fulfill the deepest desire of the other- to be loved as they are.

He would always try to stifle the killer in her, while she would try to tease the very same dark impulses out of him… They both deserve better than that.

She turns away from him and traces her steps back to the courtyard, never once looking back.

A startled shout from inside the convent reaches her ears as she slips back through the courtyard gate, and she smiles, satisfied with her handiwork.

Matthew will be more than safe here, and she is sure the sisters will nurse him back to health both physically and spiritually. Maybe he’ll even find that unconditional love he’s been so desperate for…

It’s a gift that she hopes he’ll one day come to appreciate as he should.


	2. Chapter 2

She wasn’t sure why she was here, really. 

She’d intentionally ‘missed’ the funeral service, choosing instead to pay her respects via the bottom of a rocks glass at the local bar. She had no time for, nor interest in, hearing empty platitudes from some dude in a lacy robe.

God, what _was_ it with do-gooders and their stupid costumes, anyway? 

She sighed deeply, burrowing her hands deep into her pants pockets against the evening chill. She might as well get on with it before it got too dark to see, making this whole pointless trip even more pointless. 

If she was honest with herself- something she was loathe to do, but you know, trying to be a good person and all- she skipped out on the funeral because she couldn’t face the lack of a body. She knew she couldn’t face down an empty casket or an empty urn- were Catholics still antsy about burning their dead nowadays?- or worse, nothing at all. 

An empty aisle, a crowd of sniffling people in black, the priest mumbling prayers, flickering candles on the altar… and not an ounce of closure. Just a full fucking ton of guilt. Guilt that sat heavily in her chest, as though someone had replaced her heart with a mechanism made of lead. 

It was a weight that pressed on her even in the dead of night, even after she had seen the bottom of more than a few handles of Jack. It was even with her when she lay in Oscar’s arms as the morning sun filtered through the curtains, a moment when she was supposed to be, _wanted to be_ , happy, damn it. 

“Fucking Murdock,” she growled, turning off of the road and starting to trudge up a small hill, frozen grass crunching dully beneath her boots. 

It was her fault that there was no casket or urn or whatever, same as it was her fault that there was no body in the grave she now felt herself compelled to visit. She should have seen his bleeding heart heroics coming from a mile away. She should have knocked him on his ass and thrown him over her shoulder and carried him to safety. 

It was all bullshit. The whole fucking thing was fucking bullshit. 

“Bullshit, I tell you!” she seethed, coming to a full stop between the rows of tombstones. She could just make out the names on the graves in the row to her left in the gathering darkness. 

“You see this, Murdock? I’m here, goddamnit,” she announced dryly, turning to the headstone that marked Matt’s grave. Matt’s _empty_ grave. They hadn’t even buried anything. The grass was untouched. 

“I don’t even know why I’m doing this,” she muttered into the folds of her scarf, _the_ scarf, the one he had stolen from her to use as a fucking mask, the one she couldn’t bring herself not to wear anymore. “You hear that, Murdock,” she said a little louder, addressing his tombstone, “I don’t even know why I’m here.” She shook her head in disbelief, her dark hair falling around her face. “I’m going crazy. I have to be losing my mind.”

She shuffled her feet a little to keep her toes warm, but she didn’t leave. Instead she stood there, glaring at the slab of grey granite inscribed MURDOCK in large letters across the top. Below it in a smaller, similar font was James “Battlin’ Jack” and beside it Matthew Michael. 

Matthew Michael Murdock. 

Who the hell does that to their kid? Were the eighties just the decade of disgustingly alliterative names? 

“Look, I am not one to believe in God and an afterlife and all that shit, though I know you did, so like, no offense. But man… I don’t know… maybe I need ‘closure’ or ‘to grieve’ or some other stupid catchphrase, and that’s why I’m here. Sober, I might add. Why the hell did I even come sober? I don’t know… whatever. Maybe it just feels like unfinished business or something and I’m here so I’m just going to tell you what I’m feeling… ‘You’ being the air or your spirit or a figment of my fucked up imagination…” 

She waved her hands vaguely in the air for a moment before grunting in disgust at herself and jamming them back into her pockets.

“Anyway. You should know that I’m pissed at you…Yeah, I know. What else is new?” She shrugged and then started pacing, partly to collect her thoughts, partly to keep warm. “Do you know what you did, staying down in that god damned hole? Who you hurt? I couldn’t give a flying fuck, but if I have to see Iron Clad’s hangdog expression when he gets all hero-worshippy about you one more time, I swear…”

Her voice cracked, from all the pent up anger of course, and she stopped pacing to take a deep breath, rolling her eyes in frustration. 

“And your friends? Dude, you sure don’t know how to treat the people you care about well. They’re both buried in their work, no one talks anymore, and somehow… somehow you’ve got me stuck in my own fucking head most of the time, and let me tell you, that’s a _real_ picnic… Why the hell do you think I drink so much? It’s certainly not because my thoughts are the kind you want to get chummy with… Ah fuck,” she growled, swiping at the tears suddenly cresting her dark lashes, and swallowing against the thick lump in her throat. 

“This is your fault, devil boy! I’m a fucking hot mess because of you. Because I can’t stop running scenarios in my head, trying to figure out what I could’ve done to stop your idiotic crusade to save your undead ex. I can’t stop beating myself up for not seeing through your tough guy facade… for fucks sake, you were the only one of us that could actually get hurt down there. And I let you stay…”

The tears were streaming freely now, her voice growing louder as she stomped back and forth in front of the gravestone. 

“No. Fuck you, Murdock. You chose to stay, you selfish fuck! Leaving the rest of us to inherit your screwed up sense of Catholic guilt because we couldn’t save you. But you,” she whirled on her heel and jabbed a finger at the silent gravestone, “You didn’t want to be saved. You didn’t think you were worth saving did you? DID YOU??”

The sound of her voice echoed off the neighboring headstones for a moment before the heavy silence of the winter evening returned. 

She threw her head back and sighed deeply, tired of her one-sided shouting match. The sky above her was now a dark grey and the first of the evening’s stars were fighting to make themselves seen through Manhattan’s light pollution. 

Suddenly, she was aware of someone standing just beyond her field of vision. Her head snapped back up and she squinted as she stepped towards them. “Who’s there?” she called out. 

The figure raised a hand and waved, a familiar voice greeting her ears, “Hey Jess. It’s me. Sorry to startle you.”

“Karen? What are you doing here?” she asked, feelings of incredulity and embarrassment fighting for first place in her chest. 

“I could ask you the same question,” Karen replied, not unkindly, moving to stand beside her. “I, uh, didn’t mean to intrude.”

She ducked her head, watching her feet as she kicked at a dead tuft of grass, embarrassment winning by a long shot. “How much did you hear?” 

“Most of it, I think… the important bits, at least,” Karen added with a small sigh. “Some times I hate him, too. He thought he was saving us all from something, but really, I think he was just trying to hide from himself.”

Jessica grunted in agreement. “Our own demons are usually the worst kind,” she murmured, glancing over at the woman beside her. 

Karen nodded silently, her eyes locked on the headstone Jessica had been verbally abusing moments before. “Did it feel good?” Karen asked suddenly, still staring at Murdock’s grave.

“What? The shouting?” She laughed darkly. “Yeah. Yeah, it did… though it would’ve felt better with a couple of shots.”

Karen turned to look at her then, her lips curled in a smile. “I might be able to help you there,” she said and started digging into the large bag slung over her shoulder. The unmistakable crinkle of a brown paper bag announced it’s contents even before Karen pulled the bottle of whiskey out of it. She held it up like a trophy, her smile stretched into a full blown grin. 

“What? It was just to keep warm,” she explained defensively, catching Jess’ look of surprise. 

Jessica shrugged. “Makes no difference to me… as long as you’re sharing.”

Karen smirked and twisted the cap off of the bottle, the heady aroma of high-proof alcohol carrying on the chill night air. She raised the bottle in a salute towards the grave. “To our mutual friend, where ever he might be,” she intoned before taking a long pull of the whiskey. 

Jessica snorted, taking the proffered liquor from Karen. “To selfless and selfish martyrs and their goddamned fancy pajamas.” She also saluted Matt’s grave and then threw back a large swallow of the whiskey, savoring the burn that warmed the back of her throat. 

“God, I needed that,” she sighed, passing the bottle back to Karen, who chuckled. 

“What _would_ Matt say?” she teased, before taking another swig of the whiskey.

“They’re not pajamas,” Jessica deadpanned in her best, growliest Daredevil impression.

Karen choked down her whiskey and burst out in a full out belly laugh. 

Jess smirked, equally amused with herself and she reached out to take the bottle back. “Careful there, Page,” she drawled and taking another drink. “Don’t want anyone thinking you can’t hold your liquor.”

“Hah. Good one,” Karen replied flatly, her shoulders sagging a little beneath the trim lines of her wool winter coat. In the dusk, Jess could see her jaw flex a few times, as though she was chewing on what to say next. 

“With all the shit we’ve been through it’s a wonder our livers even function at all some days, am I right?” Jess joked half-heartedly, feeling uncomfortable with the sudden, pregnant silence. She held out the bottle for Karen to take, but was waved away.

Jess shrugged and took another drink, politely ignoring the quiet sniffling she could hear beside her. Grief was a bitch all right, a real roller coaster, if she had to use another fucking trite cliche. 

Karen huffed a laugh. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me…” she murmured, hiding her tearstained face behind a curtain of blonde hair. 

“Eh. Take a number,” Jess replied, nodding toward the tombstone. 

“He was really good at getting to you, you know?” Karen said quietly, her voice a little unsteady. “There were moments he could be so… _vulnerable_ … and your heart would just open up for him. And then… then…”

“Then, he’d get all stoic and shut you out like you meant nothing to him at all,” Jess finished, her own voice a bitter monotone now. She took another drink for good measure and passed it back to Karen. 

“Yeah,” Karen muttered, her knuckles going white as she gripped the bottle. “Or at least because he didn’t want you to see how much he actually cared.” 

Jess pressed her lips together in a hard line. _That_ was a behavior she was all too familiar with herself. One she’d been desperately trying to change because she sure as hell didn’t want to end up some lonely, fucked-up martyr to her own cause like Murdock. 

Next to her, Karen drank deeply and Jess could feel the grief and need for peace radiating off the other woman. They’d both been shaken by Matt’s choice to end his life and they were both fruitlessly trying to understand why. 

“For a guy who always seemed ready to go looking for a fight, he sure was afraid of being hurt,” she observed, taking the bottle Karen passed back to her.

Karen nodded slowly. “I just wish he’d recognized that we weren’t the ones who were going to hurt him…”

“Amen to that.”

\----

All he knows is pain. 

Every breath he takes sears though him with ripples of white hot agony. 

His blood rages in his veins like molten lava, the throb of each heartbeat sending waves of scalding heat through sinew and synapse alike, incinerating him from the inside out. 

His mind… his mind is like a nuclear wasteland, scorched of anything resembling coherence, any thoughts immediately reduced to ashes before the withering inferno of pain. 

Once, the world was on fire; now, he has been consumed by it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for the comments and kudos and sorry for the delay in getting up this next installment! Hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
